have known Maribel Portela’s work since the mid-1980s when we were both coming-of-age artists in Mexico City. Our work was often included in the Salones de Artes Plásticas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico and other exhibitions; in those days, the Mexico art world was smaller, and we were all familiar with each other’s work. Through the years, Portela’s approach turned to an in-depth exploration of paper as a primary material for her installations and sculptures, challenging expectations of space, color, weight, and materials. In this conversation, Maribel Portela discusses her evolution from working with ceramic to paper, which led her to create large-scale installations inspired by the natural world to evoke—and invoke—an emotional and contemplative state of mind through her use of color.
laura anderson barbata (lab): It is so exciting for me to reconnect with you to discuss your work for Hand Papermaking magazine. As you know, I have followed your trajectory for a long time. So let’s jump right into it! Can you share with us how and when you began to work with handmade paper?
maribel portela (mp): After a large and ambitious ceramic project that I had worked on for over six years, I was exhausted and frustrated with the difficulty of moving and transporting the work. So, towards the end of 2008, I began to experiment with paper, first with amate bark paper, which is a very distinct paper that is primarily used for rituals. I traveled to San Pablito Pahuatlán, where amate paper continues to be made today following the same methods used since the pre-Columbian era. In San Pablito I visited several papermaking families and had the opportunity to learn the processes involved in the making of papel amate; this experience inspired me to take hand papermaking workshops with Per Anderson at La Ceiba Gráfica in Xalapa, Veracrúz (www.laceibagrafica.org). It was there that I learned how to make paper with various natural fibers. However, to continue making paper on my own, I would need to have a specially set-up studio with equipment, and access to lots and lots of water, so I decided that because my main interest was sculpture, I would not make my own paper and only work with paper that I could find easily.
lab: What was the process that led you to work with paper as volume, as a material with the potential to occupy three-dimensional space?
mp: For me, paper is a very special material, and I felt that embedded into it was a sensation that led me directly to its three-dimensional potential, which, as a sculptor, I am always in search of and can often find “inside” the material itself. Paper is a noble material with thousands of possibilities: folded, wrinkled, crumpled, glued, cut-out…forms and shapes that are locked inside the material, and it is my job to unlock and release them. I have a baroque spirit, so accumulation and excess is natural to me. From flat surfaces volume emerges, and the work continues to grow without resistance.
lab: You work indistinctly with handmade paper and with industrial paper; for you, what is the main difference between them? When and how do you decide to use each of them?
mp: That’s right, I do work indistinctly with both handmade paper from natural fibers as well as with industrial paper. Many of my large-scale projects are made with the very popular and common colored tissue paper. In terms of the works that I make with handmade paper, I usually make small-to-medium-scale pieces because in order to make enormous works with handmade paper, funding them becomes a challenge.
lab: One of the most surprising characteristics in your work is that the pieces often look as though they defy gravity, specifically your densely colored monumental works that are suspended in mid-air.
mp: When I am constructing a piece, I am continually thinking about the shapes and the shapes contained within the form made from multiple little pieces of paper that I cut and accumulate to create a large-scale shape, in other words, the final sculpture. And I am imagining and thinking about the ethereal, fragile, and volatile nature of this material that one thinks as delicate, but can surprise us when it becomes such a potent and vigorous presence.
lab: In our previous conversations you said, and I quote: “It is through sight that the luminous zones in paper are revealed and one can appreciate the different tones inside of each color. For this reason I would venture to say that light is a great protagonist and creative force in my sculpture.” Can you tell us more on how “light is a great protagonist and creative force” in your sculptural work?
mp: Because most papers have a certain degree of transparency, light is a very important element. And when I begin to work, and to interact with the paperʼs own potential for holding light, colors are modified and can offer a variety of shades and tonalities that would otherwise be impossible to obtain with other materials. That same transparency plays with light to reveal a series of planes that build upon themselves, which in turn enrich the work. Light and shade are siblings that work off of each other and can offer surprising richness and depth when you work with paper. I do not discriminate or exclude any type of paper, color, texture, or size. For example, I often use paper in its natural fiber color, but also use bright white paper to make works that have to do with the ethereal, dreamlike states, lightness, subtlety, and the volatile.
As I am working, folding, gluing, and accumulating pieces, I transform the flat shapes and can construct three-dimensional pieces that most of the time have a relationship with the organic world. Color becomes an element that highlights, and many times has the power to grant the work its protagonist or discrete presence. Color is a very useful resource, which is why in many cultures colors hold a symbolic meaning.
lab: Tell us more about your use of color in your work. For example, your work Botón (Flower Bud) feels like it is a living being, and this sense of the life contained within the piece is not just because of the form but because of your use of color.
mp: I think of color as transformative. I often experiment with dyeing the paper and also use inks; this gives the paper various nuances and the result is never a homogeneous color. On the other hand, when I have finished a piece and I feel that the color is not working, I dye it, and this changes the entire aspect of the piece. I approach color intuitively, my projects are not particularly colorful. The process of selecting colors depends entirely on the form and the project and frequently I use the natural colors of the fibers from which the paper is made; these tones are aligned with my approach to reinventing my own altered nature. Botón (Flower Bud) is a work that at first was in a different color, it was gray, and once the piece was finished I decided to dye it red. The process and application of that color transformed the piece completely, and the sculpture acquired a presence and potency that was granted by the color red. Another color I often use is black, resulting in works that are more grounded, heavier, somber, and melancholic.
lab: I remember one of your pieces that was exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in 2019; the work was suspended in the middle of the gallery, in a group show, and on the walls around it were paintings by other contemporary artists (my work was in that exhibition as well). Your piece dominated the space; it was dark and it appeared to contain every shade of black and all of its variants all the way to a deep dark purple. It was like an enormous dark cloud that you could not look away from; it demanded your attention and it was beautiful. Tell us more about that piece.
mp: You’re right in your perception of the work, it is from 2018 and titled Materia oscura (Dark Matter). I created that installation for an exhibition at the Centro de Estudios de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3) of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM (Center for the Study of Complexity Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico). The work is made with colored tissue paper, the piece speaks about the grief, the sorrow, the mourning, and sadness that we experience on a daily basis in this country, a country plagued by violence and death.
lab: Yes, the overwhelming sadness and the tragedy of it all is communicated in the work and, because it is so beautiful, it draws you in, allowing the spectator to connect with what our country is experiencing. Materia Oscura also transcends borders, this work has relevance anywhere on the globe, as well as El muro (The Wall). Through the multiple shades of darkness that absorb the light around them, the works evoke very strong emotions. I would now like to ask you about a color that does not absorb light but reflects it. You have been using more and more gold in your work recently, and I was wondering if your choice to work with this color is related to the same subject.
mp: Gold is the symbol of power and greed in all cultures! But it not only is a symbol attributed to power, but also to wealth, light, and the sun. The Inca people believed that gold was the flesh of the gods. In these works I attempt to address human greed and how this metal, this color impresses us, blinds us. My works become sparkling, dazzling pieces that tell us about the greed that exists in human beings and the value we give to certain objects.
lab: You have said that you aren’t particularly colorful in your work palette; I would argue the opposite. There is a tremendous amount of color and use of color along with its symbolism in your work, even if the work is in one color, there are infinite shades and tonalities in the work. For example, your use of red…
mp: There are colors that speak to us, that tell us how we are feeling and how we see ourselves in the world. And yes, red is a color that is very much present in my visual discourse because it is a color that speaks to us about passion, whether it be for good or bad. In this very violent country, red signifies blood, but also passion. This way I construct passions that are charged with violence, love, and hate, and I attempt to configure organic shapes that refer to transformation.
My visual discourse always has been about life and never about violence or lack of humanity. Nature connects us in a powerful way to the essence of our being, which is why, if you look at my work closely you will see that these giant works are constructed by hundreds or thousands of small pieces and shapes that reference a leaf, a flower, a seed…a world that is in continuous transformation.
lab: And you embrace nature in your work. Not only as subject matter but also literally, on a material level, for example all that Preludio en blanco (2012) underwent, which you carefully documented.
mp: Preludio en blanco (White Prelude) was installed and exhibited for the inauguration of the Casa del Virrey, a cultural center with an 8,000-square-meter garden, located in the center of Tlalpan in Mexico City in 2012. I had been working on this piece for nearly six or seven months; it is made with thousands of cut shapes in colored tissue paper that reference feathers and flight. It was a beautiful sunny and warm day. We installed the work and 10 minutes later began one of those torrential rains that often floods our megacity in minutes, and the work was completely destroyed.
lab: And you chose to document the work’s demise. The work references flight and light, and therefore the sky. Aptly titled Preludio en blanco, you embraced the opportunity for the sky to participate in your work as a collaborator as it stripped the piece from its structure and pinned it to the ground, to the earth. There is such beautiful poetry in that action.
